The LG Decoy is a good, midrange slider phone for Verizon with something extra: a Bluetooth headset tucked into the back, so you'll always have it at the ready.

The first mobile phone with a built-in, pop-out Bluetooth headset, the LG Decoy VX8610 is a good choice for folks who tend to misplace their mobile accessories. Even better, you don't pay too much of a premium for this innovative feature.

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From the front the Decoy looks like an ordinary midrange slider phone, but there's a twist. The 4-ounce phone measures 4.01 by 1.97 by 0.67 inches (HWD), and sports a bright, sharp-looking, 2.2-inch, 320-by-240 display, which is unfortunately covered by a glossy coating that tends to reflect light outdoors. Below the display sits a stubby little navigation joystick, which can be a bit of a challenge to wiggle effectively. Slide the screen up to find moderate-size, pleasantly bumpy number keys. But turn the Decoy over and you'll find its hidden surprise: the Bluetooth headset, which creates a bit of a bulge on the back of the phone. Press a button on the top of the handset and the headset pops free.

You need to pair the headset the first time you use it, but a four-step tutorial on the phone makes it simple. Once it's paired, there's really no reason to turn the headset off, unless you'd like to stop the blue indicator light on the back from flashing. The headset recharges when it's plugged into the phone and activates when it's removed. If the headset is tucked into the back, the phone's earpiece is active.

In the box you get a separate headset charging station and a flat spacer to fill the headset's niche on the back of the phone if you choose not to stow the headset there. (But snapping the headset into the back of the handset is the whole point of this phone!)

A solid voice phone, the Decoy has excellent reception. The earpiece exhibits the high quality I've come to expect from midrange LG Verizon phones: It's loud and clear. There's plenty of in-ear feedback of your own voice, which many people find pleasant. The speakerphone is also quite loud, if somewhat distorted at top volume. Transmissions from the built-in mic sounded very good.

The phone uses the excellent VoiceSignal voice-dialing system, which I found to be very accurate. There's a 2.5mm wired headset jack, and of course that built-in Bluetooth headset. Ringtones are quite loud, and the vibrate function is relatively strong. Battery life isn't very good. While the phone's talk time is average at about 4 hours, the headset lasts a very short 2-and-a-half hours of talk time. Yes, the headset recharges when it's plugged back into the phone, but that will just end up shortening the overall phone battery life.

Headset performance is just as important as phone performance here. We didn't test the phone with any headsets except its own. It's safe to say that if you aren't going to use the integrated headset, it doesn't make much sense to buy the Decoy. Regardless, it supports both mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, though the built-in headset is mono.

The headset is no Aliph New Jawbone, but at around 1.5 inches long and 0.75 inch wide, it's pleasingly compact, and it'll do in quiet environments. There's one large call button on the outside, and there are volume up and down buttons on the edge. It's designed to be worn in the right ear (that way, the volume buttons face up.) Indoors, with the phone resting on a table a few feet away, audio was clear. Sound from the headset remained fine at a 10-foot distance, with pops and clicks starting to surface any further than that.

Outdoors, though, the headset struggled in noisy areas. With the phone in my back pocket, there were noticeable pops and clicks in the headset. They subsided when I moved the phone to a shirt pocket. More troubling, though, was the serious garble in the headset's microphone caused by wind and street noise. I wouldn't recommend this headset for outdoor use in a busy area, but it should be fine indoors or in a closed car. The headset also plays music, loud and clear. That's an unusual feature for a mono Bluetooth headset. If you lose the headset, you can replace it for $69.99.

The Decoy also has a range of other features. You can store games, music, or video in its 65MB of internal memory, or on a microSD memory card slipped into a slot in the side. Our 8GB SanDisk card worked well. To upload and download files, you can use Bluetooth, a memory card reader, or a standard micro USB cable with a Windows PC; the phone's mass storage driver didn't work with a Mac.

Verizon's standard music player, which plays MP3, WMA, and AAC files, plus protected WMA files, is included. It syncs songs, but not playlists, with Windows Media Player, and it lets you buy tunes for $1.99 each from Verizon's online store, at least in theory. Buying songs over the air led to "License acquisition failed" error messages. Playing songs from a memory card worked fine.

The 2-megapixel camera is decent, as far as camera phones go. It takes sharp-enough, slightly noisy shots with sometimes-blown-out bright areas, but I've seen much, much worse. There's also a little blur in low-light photos. The movie mode takes decent 320-by-240-pixel videos at 15 frames per second.

You get the usual Verizon WAP browser and instant-message client, and a $5-per-month downloadable e-mail client, which supports AOL, Windows Live, Yahoo!, and POP3 accounts. The Decoy also comes with Verizon's $9.99-a-month VZ Navigator GPS driving directions service, which now includes a feature to reroute you around trafficvoice prompts are nice and loud.

The LG Decoy is a handy solution for a pretty specific problem: where to putand how to hold on toyour darned Bluetooth headset. At $179.99 with contract and rebate, it's about the same price as a midrange phone and a separate, low-end Bluetooth headset. If you want the ultimate in Bluetooth performance, stick with your current phone and get an Aliph New Jawbone or a Plantronics Voyager 520. But if you're a fan of the Decoy's innovative design, it's a fine choice.

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About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

LG Decoy VX8610

LG Decoy VX8610

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